Throughout the rest of the 16th century the European fishing fleets continued to
make almost annual visits to the eastern shores of Canada. Chiefly as a sideline of the
fishing industry, there continued an unorganized traffic in furs. At home in Europe new
methods of processing furs were developed and beaver hats in particular grew very
fashionable. Thus new encouragement was given to the infant fur trade in Canada. In 1598
Troilus de Mesgouez, marquis de la Roche, set out for Canada armed with a new kind of
authority--a royal monopoly which gave him the exclusive right to trade in furs.

La Roche established a small colony on Sable Island, an isolated
Atlantic sandbar southeast of Nova Scotia. The settlement, which proved a dismal failure,
was the first of a series of efforts by France to persuade various leaders to set up
colonies in Canada in return for an official monopoly of the fur trade. Pierre Chauvin in
1600 established a trading post at Tadoussac, on the St. Lawrence River. This post
survived for about three years.

In 1604 the fur monopoly was granted to Pierre du Guast, sieur de Monts.
He led his first colonizing expedition to an island located near the mouth of the St.
Croix River. This in time was to mark the international boundary between the province of
New Brunswick and the state of Maine. Among his lieutenants was a geographer named Samuel
de Champlain, who promptly carried out a major exploration of the northeastern coastline
of what is now the United States (see Champlain). In the spring the St. Croix
settlement was moved to a new site across the Bay of Fundy, on the shore of the Annapolis
Basin, an inlet in western Nova Scotia.

Here at Port Royal in 1605 a settlement Champlain described as the Habitation was
established. It was France's most successful colony to date. The land came to be known as
Acadia